


Pulse Point

by alantieislander



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Choking, Consensual but "wrong", F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Dyad (Star Wars), Kylo Ren is Not Nice, Kylo Ren is also crazy in love, Light Angst, Light Bondage, Mentioned Han Solo, Mentioned Leia Organa, Mentioned Luke Skywalker, Prisoner Kylo Ren, Rey is Nobody (Star Wars), Rey is horny but doesn't know it, but not the stupid TROS way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:00:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28944084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alantieislander/pseuds/alantieislander
Summary: First to be beaten by her, with THAT saber, and then to be shot out of the atmosphere by a heap of rebel junk and shoved into this prison cell. Two failures knocking him askew, and only one cause:The girl.--Kylo is taken prisoner by the Rebels and Rey comes to question him. This takes place after TFA and before TLJ, so Rey and Kylo have never force bonded or anything (yet.) The last time they saw each other was the fight in the woods.
Relationships: Kylo Ren & Rey, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Kylo Ren/Ben Solo
Comments: 15
Kudos: 70





	Pulse Point

**Author's Note:**

> [](https://imgur.com/nZCCd5X)   
> 
> 
> I posted half of this many months ago, and then deleted it when I knew it needed more work. Here it is in its entirety.
> 
> \-------------------------------

The Supreme Leader had been right.

Kylo Ren was unbalanced.

There was no other reason for his current situation - back against the stone wall of a rebel holding cell, metal bars between him and an automatic door that had barely been operational enough to close. _A defunct and ruined hideout for a weak and desperate rebellion._ Kylo sighed into the silence of the heavy air and pulled his damp cloak tighter.

It had been an error in judgment that led to his capture. Distracted, he’d been a moment too slow. _Weak._ Supreme Leader warned him before he set out, spitting words filled with mockery but Kylo had pushed forward with the attack of the rebel base, leading his squadron into the fray. It was an insignificant battle with no pay off, but he advanced - if only to prove that he was still fully dedicated and focused on the mission. The galaxy needed to be returned to its rightful order, the rebel scum and Jedi needed to be wiped out along with anyone who stood in the way. No matter how insignificant they appeared.

Even if they were just one scavenger girl from a sun-bleached planet in the Outer Rim.

She had fought in the woods brilliantly -- Kylo would admit that. He'd practically admitted it to her there, sprawled in the snow under her feral attack. The Dark Side had coiled around them as they dueled, so drawn to her, skimming under the surface of every blow. And yet she’d gracefully stepped around it and away. How was she real? The _power_ that had radiated from her. He felt his chest constrict even now at the memory of it. The way her greygreen eyes had fluttered shut, flakes of ash and snow on her lashes, as the Force rose up and pushed pushed pushed past Kylo’s shields and traps and training. The ground quaked as the planet crumbled, and she’d left him there with searing injuries and a traitorous Solo heart split in two.

_Fuck._

He shook his head as if it could erase the desperation he'd felt at her parting. Had that feeling been worse than his shame on the throne room floor, his Master sneering above him? Worse than his frenzied need to attack attack _attack_. First to be beaten by her, with THAT saber, and then to be shot out of the atmosphere by a heap of rebel junk and shoved into this prison cell. Two failures knocking him askew, and only one cause:

The girl.

Kylo could only hope that when the door finally opened again it would be by someone easily overpowered so he could quickly return to the Supreme Leader, disciplined beyond distraction and back to balance in his rightful place.

It was not to be.

Hours later, his only warning was a ripple through the Force before the rusting door screeched open and there she was. Something breathless and desperate punched him in the gut at the sight of her.

“You,” he almost choked on the words. “They sent… _you._ ”

She was dressed in darker clothes than the last time he’d seen her, the fabric rich with texture and perfect stitches of defter hands, so unlike the rags she used to wear. A cloak was wrapped around her shoulders, and half of her hair was pulled away from her clean face, the rest loose around her neck. It surprised him that she looked stronger, more mature. Like a landscape that had finally received the rain it needed to flourish. 

“The General thought that someone who’d dueled you and survived would be the best person to interrogate you,” Rey said, words clipped as she kept her eyes trained on the data pad in her hands. He wanted her to look at him.

“The General,” he scoffed, almost a laugh. “She should’ve come herself." 

“She’s busy.”

The very thought of his mother only levels away in this very base, refusing to come meet him face to face, made him seethe. She always did retreat when she should advance, turning a blind eye to situations that required her attention. He kicked some of the gravel under his boot before replying sharply, "Or perhaps she doesn’t mind sacrificing another lamb to her great cause.”

“You’re going to pay for what you did,” she spat, turning the data pad over in her hands awkwardly, as if to remind herself what she was there to do. She gripped it tighter and steeled herself to continue, “But first you’re going to answer the questions I've been told to ask you."

It was false control. He felt her nervousness, like a deer just beginning to sense danger nearby, muscles tensed. He knew prey when he saw it. She may be powerful, but she was still just a girl.

Kylo tilted his head and gestured politely with a gloved hand, “By all means.”

Rey took a deep breath. “How did the First Order track our ships to this base?”

Silence. 

Water dripped somewhere nearby, but it was so quiet otherwise that they could both hear the battery humming in the light panel above the door. Seconds passed.

The silence seemed to bother her. There was a flush on her cheeks, and she blinked more than necessary. Interrogation was a fine and delicate task - and she was still just a scavenger.

"You are not in the position to refuse to answer,” she finally said, fingertips turning white for how hard she was gripping the device, “We WILL do what we have to to get this information.”

"Tsk tsk. Is that any way to treat a guest?"

"A guest like I was,” she snapped back, “chained to a bench?"

"I didn't hurt you," he replied, words simple in their smallness but enormous in their meaning. They floated in the dark between the cell bars for longer than words should, and momentarily stunned Rey before she remembered her anger.

”You killed your father, murderous snake,” she lashed out, body coiled like she was about to strike. The adrenaline of her rage fed the darkest parts of his soul. _She wasn’t the deer at all, he knew better - she was the archer._ She took a step forward. "Let's try a different question. What does the First Order want with Luke Skywalker?"

It was Kylo’s turn to be enraged. _Skywalker._ Sick bile of betrayal and revenge clouded his vision at the mention of his former master. He stood up suddenly, startling her. ”What do you know of Luke Skywalker?”

"That's none of your business.”

"Did they tell you what happened? With Luke? Do you know what he did? Do _they?_ " He moved closer, towering above her. He wanted to draw all of the torrential rage from inside him and use it to crush her, overwhelm her little body with every moment of pain and anger and every horrific memory so she would know it. Know him.

She jutted her chin up at him, indignant and unmoved. But her eyes met his. 

_Finally. Finally._

“I know everything I need to know about you.”

Kylo smirked coldly.

“You do?” he stepped into the light that surrounded her, eyes never leaving her face. “Ah, you do. You have that look in your eye, from the forest, when you called me a monster.”

“You _are_ a monster.”

He thought perhaps she’d kill him with her bare hands if he wasn’t locked away from her. He thought perhaps he wanted her to try.

“Yes, I am. But so is he. And so are you. To have this power and wield it - it is lonely, and it is dangerous,” Kylo’s gaze dropped to her lips. “I could teach you.”

He was drunk on the presence of her, close enough now that he could notice small things - the dip of her cupid’s bow, the small crease between her eyebrows spent from starving nights of worry in the Jakku desert. His archer. His prey.

Everything played out on her expressive face. She couldn’t hide anything, not from him. First there was surprise, then something achingly curious, bordering on sadness.

”Why did you do it?" Her voice was small.

“Why what?” He pushed, "Why what? Say it.”

“Why did you kill him? I don’t understand.”

There were tears in her eyes and something dark inside him rejoiced, to have this emotion of hers for him. For what he’d done. He needed more. He wanted to obliterate her. He wanted to _know_ she had been obliterated _by him_. 

“Because your parents threw you away like garbage.”

"They didn't," she bit back through clenched teeth. Closer still.

"They _did._ And yet you can’t stop needing them. It's your greatest weakness. Looking for them everywhere, in Han Solo, and now in your General. Always looking back and waiting for them to give you something, when they’ve given you nothing and they never will.”

"Shut up.”

"Your precious General and her little Rebellion -- their hero Skywalker -- they sensed my power, as they sense yours. And they will do everything they can to control it."

“Liar!” She was practically touching the bars between them now. Her chest rising and falling with heavy breaths. Her fury was intoxicating. _Vicious powerful feral thing._

_Come closer._

He shrugged, feigning nonchalance, ”Why else did they send you into this room with me?”

She opened her mouth to respond but was cut off when suddenly, in one swift motion, Kylo snapped his hand out through the bars and grabbed her by the throat.

“H-how DARE you,” she gasped, clawing at his sleeves, forearms, wrists. He could feel the muscles of her throat gulping and she twisted beneath his hands like a wild animal. _So fragile._ All it would take to end this was to squeeze just a bit harder, until-

Her fingertips slipped under the edge of leather gloves, and the jolt of her skin against his shattered his focus. Something snapped through the air, as if the Force quaked between them at the touch, and Kylo's blood roared in his ears for an instant and then just as suddenly — stopped.

Rey’s eyes widened. She felt it too. And whatever it was, it made her stop struggling. As if all of the fight had been yanked out of her body with a hook, and what remained was soothed with the solid quiet closing around them.

Kylo had never felt the Force like this before. It felt like an embrace charged with electricity. He thought the Dark Side would feel more triumphant when he seized her, coursing through him with the intention to crush and burn them both to ash, but instead... it was still. Satisfied. Seemingly content in his possession of her. It almost made him dizzy, her warm fingers curled into his gloves were his only anchor.

“Kylo.” 

The shape of his name in her mouth felt like falling. His thumbs slid of their own accord to the soft place under her chin, tilted her head so he could gaze down at her upturned face. One tear fell to meet his glove as she blinked up at him with wide eyes.

He couldn’t help but to bend his head and actually breathe her in. Her pulse quickened under his hands.

"Why? Why did you hate him?” she pleaded softly, “Please...”

Kylo couldn't remember the last time he'd been so close to another human he wasn't about to slaughter, and that included her in the forest. This was the face that had been haunting him, and now it was just there, warm and living in his hands. He couldn't stop searching it - her pink gasping mouth, the wet edge of her eyelashes, the swirl of the sweaty hair against her temple.

She wanted to know because she felt it too, whatever it was between them. The magnetic charge of dark and light sides, pulsing there. She needed to know that there was something more in him than someone who’d taken away Han Solo, the first person who’d genuinely cared about her like a father should. He wished, for the first time, that things could be different.

He couldn’t answer her.

How could he explain years and years of disciplined, obsessive training to be something beyond what his parents, Luke, or even Snoke wanted of him? How could he tell her about that terrific moment of clarity when he ran his lightsaber through his father’s body and how it gave way to utter brokenness in the weeks since?

How could he tell her that he had been a prisoner his entire life, except for this very moment, with her little throat in his hands and her tiny warm fingers on his pulse point - thick iron bars between them?

She waited, utterly still and horribly trusting.

“I didn’t hate him,” he finally answered, so low. So quiet. The words had been just waiting to be said for years, and he'd tried so hard to never say them. She blinked, another tear leaving a stain on her cheek. 

“There’s so much you don’t understand,” he continued, as he pulled her closer still, dropping his face against hers. He needed to feel her tears on his skin. He needed it like he’d never needed anything before. _Why could he not stop needing her?_

"Let go of me," her voice was nearly silent, but he felt his hair move with the breath of it.

"We are the same, you and I. Lonely creatures of extraordinary power," he murmured. She almost vibrated under him. “I know you feel it too.”

“I don’t feel anything.” Words grating through her clenched jaw. 

He whispered into her cheekbone. “Let go of me first.” 

Her grip on his wrists tightened.

" _Let go_ , Rey.”

It seemed like she was about to.

Almost.

But instead, she surprised him by turning her head and pressing her lips to his.

Kylo felt like he’d been tipped upside down. 

She was kissing him. Insistently. _She was kissing him._ She pushed up on her toes to press her mouth more firmly to his, chasing after him. _Wanting_ him.

A mix between a growl and an incredulous groan bubbled up in his chest and it took everything in him to not swallow her whole, to not haul her body against the bars between them so hard she might bear the shape of them for hours after. He pushed the tip of his tongue against her bottom lip, testing gently and _oh_ – she opened up instantly, the warmth of her mouth yielding to his and he drank from it like a starving man.

He was vaguely aware that someone could be watching, that they could be interrupted, that this was by far the most dangerous position he’d ever been in, but all of the alarm bells were muffled through the surge of the Force that felt _so right_ around them. Drunk on the energy of it, drowsy with his desire.

She pulled back to take gasping breaths, eyelashes fluttering open, as one of her hands smoothed back around his neck. Her nose nuzzled against his jaw, body leaning heavily as though he was the only thing that held her up. 

“What is this?” she moaned into the corner of his mouth.

Kylo shook his head slightly. He didn’t know. He had never— god, _fuck._ This was worse than being bested in any forest or throne room. This was a total loss of control. He suddenly felt frantic with it, a lump forming in his dry throat and he tried to swallow it down. _Balance, control, control, he needed control,_ but just as he started to pull back from her warmth and her small sweet neck, she grabbed at his gloves.

“Take these off,” she whispered, desperately pulling at the leather at his wrist, “I want to feel you.”

The bottom dropped out of Kylo’s soul. 

He watched her peel the leather back, her breath trembling but her motions confident. It only took a moment, and then she dropped the gloves in the gravel beneath them. The skin of his palms prickled, empty and exposed. He flexed them in wonder, maybe a little in fear, and then she was between them again, hands on his wrists, guiding his hands back to her throat. 

Warm skin, vibrating with blood and breath, the pads of his fingers squeezed and released in primal eagerness, claiming the most vulnerable part of her.

Was he shaking? Or was it her? A rattled gasp fell from her lips as she looked up at him again, eyes blown black. He pulled her lips to his once more, sucking her breath into his chest as she fisted his cloak, clutching him harder against the bars between them.

It wasn’t close enough.

He needed more.

Snaking his arm out and around her waist, he held the soft bird frame of her body through the layers of fabric. Kylo’s mouth left hers to trail down as close as he could get to her neck, smelling the sweat of her skin and tasting any possible bruise he could’ve left there when he had grabbed her earlier. He wanted to apologize. Soothe them, lick them away. He wanted to squeeze her throat again. ite down. Leave more marks. _Claim her._

Mine. Mine. _Mine._

Perhaps this was how he found balance again. Maybe instead of being the source of his imbalance, she could be the source of his power. This little scavenger, so filled to the brim that it could overflow to fill him as well.

“I didn’t know the Force could feel like…” she started, voice wafting as if she was dreaming, “… I mean… I kept having the worst visions, the strangest thoughts. Dreams,” her focus was fuzzy, staring somewhere around his Adam’s apple, when suddenly it sharpened and her eyes found his, “after I left you on Starkiller Base… I’ve never felt so alone.”

He sucked in a breath, and he knew, all at once.

He wasn’t the hunter.

“You’re not alone.”

And he wasn’t the prey.

She made a soft little sound in the back of her throat and pushed closer to him again, hiding her face in his cloak. It was as if she wanted to burrow into him like he was a shelter in a dune somewhere, like he was somewhere safe and hidden. 

_He was her shield._

“You’re not alone,” he repeated, wanting the words to sink into her skin. 

“Neither are you.” 

Her small quiet admission filled every possible space in the room, every nook and cranny of his darkness, and it took every ounce of his strength to not sink to his knees in front of her.

“Rey.”

She shook her head against his chest, refusing to look up. His hands began running circles on her back, soothing, as if checking to be sure it was real. It still felt impossible to have her in his arms, her bright little soul in her strong little body, covered with new fabric and simply radiant. 

“Rey, look at me.”

But her words were finished. She had admitted enough, and had nothing more to say. When her chin finally lifted from his chest, Kylo was sure she would pull away, but instead her mouth found his again, tongue pushing into his without hesitation. Fingers clawed up his collar and she tangled herself into his hair and mouth and soul all at the same time.

Gasping breaths between kisses, his bare palms ran over her body like they belonged, finding an opening in the cloak and the heat of her clothed belly, the planes of her sides, the underside of her breast. She gasped at the touch, new and catching, and kissed him harder. It felt like an invitation. His knee pushed through the bars, between her legs.

“Kylo.” A softly hinged whine against his lips as she beared herself down on his thigh, and it was his turn to gasp. The blood rushed through his veins and his mind flashed with images of less fabric and miles of warm skin. The longing knocked the wind out of his chest.

“You belong with me,” he moaned against her mouth, “surely you can feel it.” She nodded - just once - and tried to kiss his words away. “Leave the others,” he pushed. “Join me.”

What was soft and open went rigid beneath him, dark, like a cloud covering the sun. “No,” her head shook against his neck, “Don’t.”

“Rey--”

She stepped back. 

He grabbed her by the hand desperate to keep her from leaving him, skin to skin, the Force still moving around them with the contact. She shook her head over and over, eyes trained on the gloves that lay at his feet. Fear welled up inside him, clawing its wrath through his veins.

“These people don’t care about you, they only want you for your power. You are more than that to me.”

She stepped back again, hand pulling out of his. The world roared back, and the Force receded like a wave pulled back from a steep shore, sucked back into the void where it existed. His chest felt empty.

“Liar.” A withdrawn mumble into the dark, like defeat. And regret.

It infuriated him.

“I am not! I never have. Not to you,” he snarled. Her eyes flashed up to him, expression hardening, and she stepped back once more. “Search your feelings, you know that.”

He grabbed his muddy gloves off the floor and yanked them on to shaking hands. He hated that they were shaking, and he hoped she couldn’t see it. There were tears rolling down her face again and she retreated until her back met the wall behind her, the furthest she could be from him without leaving the room. He was desperate.

“Join me.” Begging now. He extended his hand through the bars, leather creaking as he opened his palm to her. “ _Please._ ”

She closed her eyes, and the Force shimmered around the edges of the room and felt like hope for one instant, and then slammed through the air like a fist into his ribcage, roaring up his spine and into his brain, and everything went black.

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhhh I'm gonna have to do a second part, aren't I? This ending is so mean.
> 
> This fic was inspired by Sadie/Reylohirrim and this picture, from which I made the very messy manip above:
> 
> [](https://imgur.com/38WiduC)  
> 
> 
> Thank you to my amazing beta/twitter wifey LaneReads who doesn't let me get away with constant tense changes, and always screams with joy at the right parts.
> 
> I'm on twitter where I mostly post my own fanart and scream about other people's fics and say sassy things about the state of the world: https://twitter.com/alantieislander


End file.
